Shanghai

The disabled bus blocking the busiest intersection in downtown Shanghai yesterday was a prominent bulletin board, its windows plastered with photocopied pages from Hong Kong newspapers describing the slaughter Sunday in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Students and workers crowded around the vehicle at dusk to read the latest news from the Chinese capital, and, in marked contrast to Beijing, the streets of China's largest city were not dominated by heavily armed troops. Instead the streets were crowded with bicycles, strollers, street vendors and clusters of agitated people reading photocopied wall posters and debating events of the past several days.

The spectacle of tens of thousands of Chinese students demonstrating in the streets of Shanghai for democratic reforms and freedom of the press never would have occurred in the Soviet Union. In Moscow the youths would have been arrested before they hit the streets. In Shanghai, city officials met with the students and initially said the demonstrations were legal. True, after two weeks of sporadic student protests in other large cities, capped by three straight days of Shanghai rallies, the city authorities cracked down and banned unauthorized gatherings.

October 16, 1986 | By W. Speers, Inquirer Staff Writer (The Associated Press and United Press International contributed to this article.)

Midway through her China tour, Queen Elizabeth II yesterday visited Shanghai, the nation's most heavily populated city, where she was cheered and gaped at by hordes of citizens as she took a "walkabout" through a traditional bazaar. "It was a triumphant welcome," said royal spokesman Michael Shea. "I've never seen so many people in the streets. We can safely talk about millions. " Residents pointed out, however, that in the city of 12 million people, the daytime streets are usually filled with millions.

Dynamite exploded in a passenger compartment of a train outside Shanghai, killing at least 24 people and seriously injuring 11, official reports said today. An official of the city's Foreign Affairs Office described yesterday's blast as an accident. Western diplomats in Shanghai said there was no indication it was linked to this month's military suppression of the pro- democracy movement. The national television news showed tape of a gaping hole in the side of the train from the explosion, which it said occurred in a toilet at the front of a third-class compartment.

Empire of the Sun, by J.G. Ballard (Pocket Books, $4.50), is a remarkable experience, an autobiographical novel of Englishman Ballard's youth in Shanghai during World War II. The very first chapter - titled "The Eve of Pearl Harbor" - grabs, and the first sentence haunts with premonitions of violence and death: "Wars came early to Shanghai, overtaking each other like the tides that raced up the Yangtze and returned to this gaudy city all the coffins...

Sigmund Tobias was 6 when he first stepped foot on the dock at Shanghai. It was the summer of 1939. A Jewish refugee from Germany, he was struck first by the diseased bodies strewn along the narrow streets like so much garbage. "People would call the hospital to come pick them up, but whoever called had to pay for the trip," said Tobias, 58. "You soon learned that no matter how unpleasant it was, you didn't call. " In 1988, when the tall, bearded professor of educational psychology at the City College of New York returned to Shanghai as a visiting professor, all vestiges of the Shanghai of his youth had been erased.

Like many beauties, Ying-Ti faces a dilemma: Should she marry for love or for money? The two seldom come in the same package. Unlike many striking young women, the lowborn Ying-Ti doesn't have a choice. Since she lives in 1910 Shanghai, the decision will be made for her. Sold to the second son of a wealthy Shanghai dowager, Ying-Ti learns on her wedding day that her fiance is a blind invalid. Rouge of the North, based on the book by expatriate Chinese novelist Eileen Chang, is a melodrama ripe with intrigue.

Ordinarily, Mao Tse-tung looks down on all who enter the front gate of Fudan University, his face the picture of wisdom and serenity, his body thrust slightly forward, his hands clasped statesmanlike behind his back. But now this colossal stone rendering of Mao looks down on makeshift scaffolding draped in black cloth enclosing funeral wreaths. A white banner hand-painted in black Chinese characters hangs across the front of the enclosure. "Mountains and rivers are crying for them," it says.

It seems that duck tongue is every Chinatown foodie's double-dare dish these days. Its mere presence has become a sort of hallmark of authenticity in the neighborhood's new guard of regional-minded restaurants. This is one delicacy, however, that I clearly wasn't meant to savor. It's not that I'm unadventurous. And I believe Sakura Mandarin owner Jack Chen when he says that nothing evokes a Shanghai snack quite like munching the wine-poached taste buds off those bony little cluckers.

The official history is, of course, false. At the gray stone building where the Chinese Communist Party was founded nearly 90 years ago, a life-size wax diorama shows one delegate towering over the rest: Mao Tse-tung. He's the only figure who stands fully upright, set in the center of the group. But in fact, at that secret meeting in July 1921, Mao was just one of several competitors for power, his future ascension unknown and uncertain. It's a subtle rewrite of the past in a city that is energetically writing its future - and doing so in ways that Mao never would have accepted.

Alfred Pick, 100, who escaped from Nazi Germany and became a Philadelphia druggist, died on Wednesday, Aug. 28, at Paul's Run, a retirement community in the city's Bustleton section. His father, Salomon, and mother, Elsa, owned a general store in the town of Gleiwitz close to the border with Poland, until the family was sent to a Nazi work camp, Mr. Pick's son Robert of Cherry Hill said. Mr. Pick and a cousin eventually fled through Poland and Russia to Shanghai, China, his son said.

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. SHANGHAI, China - Saturday was National Children's Day in China, and the Philadelphia Orchestra ended the first week of its 40th anniversary tour and residency on a kid-centric note. In the afternoon, two orchestra members faced perhaps one of the least predictable audiences of their careers at the "Angel Salon," the nickname of a weekly music class at which Beethoven is taught to autistic children.

Keith Li, the Hong Kong-based chief executive officer of Bosera Asset Management (International) Co., has died. He was 42. Li died March 11 in Hong Kong of an "acute illness," according to Suki Chau, marketing manager at the company. She declined to provide more details, citing privacy. Before joining the Chinese asset manager, Li was a managing director at E.J. McKay & Co., a Shanghai-based investment bank, and was a director at Citigroup Inc.'s private-banking arm, according to Bosera.

Thirty-four years and what looked like a century ago, I traveled inside what was then known as Red China. With official United States recognition approaching, the People's Republic opened its doors. Having studied in Taiwan, I received a limited visa and missed the Great Wall and other sites. After teaching Chinese culture for 30 years, I returned in November. What we saw on my return was more contemporary than I anticipated, and being there was inspiring. Here were 12-lane highways intersecting modern, crowded cities; stores with merchandise aplenty; and a fashionably dressed, vibrant people.

Novak Djokovic saved five match points in the second set before outlasting two-time defending champion Andy Murray , 5-7, 7-6 (11), 6-3, on Sunday in the Shanghai Masters final. In another entertaining matchup between the two U.S. Open finalists, Djokovic seemed headed for defeat when Murray was serving for the match at 5-4 in the second set. But the second-ranked Serb saved one match point in that game before breaking back for 5-5. He then saved four more in a tense tiebreaker and carried his momentum into the deciding set, breaking the Briton twice to earn his fifth title of the year.

BEIJING - With its sparkling domed skylight, polished granite floor tiles, grand piano, and string of retail outlets such as Timberland and Nautica, the Beijing South Railway Station could compete with the world's finest for modernity and cleanliness. It was here in December that we boarded China's new high-speed bullet train that whisked us off to Shanghai, more than 800 miles to the south, in just five hours. For efficiency and comfort at a relatively low price ($185 round-trip for second-class seats that were nicer than those on Amtrak's Acela)

Hello there In August 2003, Leah, who works in IT for an international pharmaceutical company with local offices, persuaded her employer to send her to London for nine months. The move was her second trip outside North America. About eight weeks later, she and a friend went to a cheesy dance club in West London. Leah had had just about enough of the place when across the dance floor, she saw a handsome man who also looked like he'd rather be somewhere else. Jonathan danced up to Leah and introduced himself.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Since it started up in April, the San Francisco digital-publishing site www.Byliner.com has specialized in long-form-narrative nonfiction. It has compiled quite an archive - more than 60,000 pieces by more than 4,000 writers. Now, Byliner has broadened its scope to include fiction, and it drafted novelist Amy Tan ( Joy Luck Club ) to write its inaugural offering, her 14,000-word Rules for Virgins . This is the first piece of fiction Tan has published in six years, since Saving Fish From Drowning . Rules is described as "the sensual tale of an aging master courtesan instructing her beautiful young prótegée in the ways of love and business in 1912 Shanghai.

Shanghai is a city of unrelenting growth. A taxi ride from the airport reveals hundreds of bright yellow and red construction cranes whirling about its skyline. The parade of skyscrapers is measured not in blocks but in miles. All of Manhattan could fit in Shanghai's back pocket. The current population of Shanghai is estimated to be 23 million - up from 18 million only five years ago. This is a city that has more people than the entire continent of Australia. How does a visitor even begin to get a grip on this vast region?

U.S. Open champion Rory McIlroy shot an 8-under 64 on Thursday to take a 1-stroke lead in the Shanghai Masters, the lucrative invitational tournament that isn't sanctioned by any of the major tours. The 22-year-old from Northern Ireland had eight birdies in his bogey-free round on Lake Malaren's Masters course. American Hunter Mahan was second with a 65. England's Paul Casey and Ian Poulter and Ireland's Padraig Harrington were 3 shots back at 67. Thirty players are vying for the $2 million first prize, the richest in golf.